


The Heart of Darkness

by Sergeant Heretic (2SFlovers)



Category: Apocalypse Now (1979)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 13:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2775053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2SFlovers/pseuds/Sergeant%20Heretic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The Sarge has passed away. Her stories will remain to entertain and delight, but no more are coming.</p></blockquote>





	1. Into the maze

Leaving Nha Trang province, Republic of Vietnam, 1969:

Lieutenant Stefani Bamberger sat on the canvas and aluminum bench in the passenger/cargo bay of the Bell HU 01 Iroquois Utility helicopter as it flew toward the mouth of the Mekong Delta. On the other end of the bench sat Captain Benjamin L. Willard, U.S.Army Special Forces, 505th Battalion, 173rd airborne division.

Lieutenant Bamberger’s professional appraisal of him was that he was the sanest man she had ever met in her life.

It was just the situation that was completely crazy

He sat there thinking his own thoughts and occasionally sparing a glance askance at Lieutenant Bamberger. The reason was that she was wearing a green beret. Lt. Bamberger understood his skepticism completely given that he could not have known of Project Boudicca, the Defense Department’s pilot project to determine if women could fight in combat on an equal level with men.

Against the secret hopes of the Army’s old boys club Lieutenant Bamberger passed on an equal footing.

She did it, so now they had to try something new to get rid of this inconvenient double X chromasomed fact.

One might wonder what a highly decorated Special Forces officer such as Willard and a ‘freak’ such as Lieutenant Bamberger were doing aboard this helicopter headed for the mouth of the Nung River in South Vietnam.

The answer was thus: Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz had gone insane and was now running his own war using neutral Cambodia as his base of operations. According to the testament of General Corman of U.S. Army intelligence, Kurtz had gone completely off the reservation. Up to and including the murder of civilians and MAC/V/SOG personnel he claimed were ‘double agents’.

Stefani remembered the stark surreality of the meeting very well. She sat in the dining nook of the trailer as the briefing unfolded and listened as she had been told to do.

“Don’t feel you need to interject any comments, Lt. Bamberger, just speak when spoken to, otherwise, mind your place.”

She had asked before the briefing,

“Sir, with respect, what am I doing here?”

“Lt. you have training in clinical psychology and in psychiatry. Before you were chosen for Boudicca, you were a specialist with U.S. Army Medical corps psychology division. You are here because we have already lost one man, Captain Richard Colby to Kurtz’s madness, we do not intend to see this mission fail. If Willard shows stresses or indicates that he may fold, you are to address the situation as it develops.”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

She did not, not fully. During the actual briefing Bamberger did as she was told and remained silent, watching impassively as Willard was told of his mission in the general’s faux folksy manner of insincere friendliness. He spared only a glance toward Lt. Bamberger and told Willard, 

“Lt. Bamberger is a specialist in psychological dysfunction as well as being a fully trained Green Beret. She’ll go with you and assess the full situation in situ when you arrive.”

Lt. Bamberger heard the name of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz and a terrible feeling of dread took root in the pit of her stomach. It grew worse as she heard his voice on the surveillance tape.

“I watched a snail,…crawl across the edge of a straight razor,…crawl across, and survive,…that’s my dream, that’s my nightmare,…we must forgive them, They lie and we must be merciful to those who lie. Those, nabobs, how I hate them. We must destroy them, we must annihilate them, pig after pig, cow after cow, village after village, how I hate them,…”

Corman and Lucas seemed disturbed and lost in their own thoughts. Willard was trying to evaluate what he heard and Corman told him of Kurtz’ descent into murderous irrationality. The men in the room were apparently too busy to see Lt. Bamberger’s utter stark unmoving terror at the sound of the voice of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.

When the Briefing ended and the two officers boarded the helicopter, Willard asked her perplexedly,

“What’s a woman doing in the Green Berets?”

“The Army has a thing for dancing bears.”

“How’s that again?”

“Never mind, Sir, it’s nothing.”

The Bell HU-01 Iroquois was known to the ‘grunts’ in country by another shorter name. They called it the ‘Huey’. It was an obvious portmanteau of the initials ‘H’ and ‘U’.

This particular Huey carried Willard and Bamberger to a rendezvous with the 1st squadron, 9th air cavalry regiment. They would have the duty of escorting Willard and Bamberger to the mouth of the Nung River and with their primary transportation, a Patrol Boat Riverene code named ‘Streetgang’. The crew of PBR Streetgang consisted of the following sailors:

Chief quartermaster George ‘Chief’ Phillips  
Engineerman 3rd class Jay ‘chef’ Hicks  
Gunner’s mate 3rd class Lance Johnson  
Gunner’s mate 3rd class Tyrone ‘Mr. Clean’ Miller. 

Chief Phillips was not enthusiastic about carrying Willard and Bamberger so far up the river into ‘indian country.’ It was not safe and he did not understand the mission. Chief did not like things he did not understand.

Lance looked like he had no business anywhere near Vietnam, Republic of, not with as fresh faced, and wide eyed as he looked.

Chef didn’t like Lt. Bamberger and seemed to radiate ‘go-away’ vibes. She was a female soldier in the field and as far as Chef was concerned, she may well have dropped in from Mars. 

Mr. Clean’ or ‘Clean’, just seemed to go on lockdown. He sat in his gun cupola and glared out at Willard and Bamberger from underneath furrowed brows. This was going to be a tense journey. Willard and Bamberger could not even tell the PBR crew of their true mission. As far as Chief knew, they were on a rescue mission or a recon mission of some kind.

PBR ‘Streetgang” started up the river. Captain Willard spent most of his time Isolated from the rest of the men, reading Colonel Kurtz’ dossiers and being amazed at what he read. Lt. Bamberger spent the time apprising the crew of PBR Streetgang. 

Chief Quartermaster George Phillips was an older man, probably the oldest person on the boat. He seemed to be a steady professional man, but it was easy to see he spent much of his time trying to be what everyone expected and trying to be the strong center of the crew.

Engineman 3rd class Jay Hicks. He was very traditional and very high strung. He seemed far too high strung to be in South Vietnam; Then again he seemed too high strung for New Orleans, his home town.

Gunner’s mate Lance Johnson was a kid, he did not seem to have ever received the memo that he was in a combat zone. Johnson just had that whole surfer-zen thing going on. All Bamberger could think was that when he fell down from his mellow ivory tower it was going to be nasty.

Gunner’s mate 3rd class Tyrone Miller was a 17 year old boy from the borough of the Bronx in New York City. He was an inner city kid and the jungles and openness of Vietnam was severely wierding him out.

No one spoke to Bamberger very much; she was just too great an oddity for them. Occasionally the men might excuse themselves for making a ribald joke, or walk past her or over her to reach another part of the boat, but other than that, to them she was something they wanted to pretend was not real.

After several days motoring up river in uneventful boredom, the Patrol boat river reached a point In the Mekong delta that was the Area of Operations of the moment, for the 1st Battalion of the 9th Regiment, Air Cavalry, led by Colonel William Kilgore.

The 1st of the 9th was Air Cav, they traded in horses for helicopters and spent their days rip-roaring around Vietnam kicking over garbage cans.

The beach battle they were now wrapping up had not even happened one hour ago.

Willard and Bamberger put on steel pot helmets with cloth covers, and took up their rifles and web gear as they headed up the beach looking for Colonel Kilgore.  
They found him dismounting from his chopper and ordering his men to,

“Bomb that treeline back about 300yards, gimmee some goddamned room to breath!”

The two Special Forces officers were still trying to catch him when he asked one of his troopers to,

“Gimmee a deck of body cards.”

He took the deck, broke the seal on his academy ring and then threw the box away, then he started throwing the cards onto the bodies of the dead Viet Cong Guerillas.

Bamberger had to ask,

“What are those?”

Willard answered,

“Death cards”

The prop wash from a passing bird drowned him out and so she had to ask again, 

“What?”

“DEATH CARDS, They let Charlie know who did this!”

Willard finally caught up to Kilgore as he was getting another report and told him,

“Sir, I am Captain Willard, MAC/V/SOG I am told you received orders from Nha Trang about transporting me to the Nung river?”

“I never received any communiqué from Nha Trang , Captain, He looked at Willard’s orders and told him, 

“We’ll see what we can do, but no promises, son.” 

Then Kilgore stopped as he saw Lt. Bamberger and exclaimed,

“Jesus, son what the hell is this, did Nha Trang tell you, you could bring your girlfriend with you?”

Kilgore laughed and said again,

“Jesus.”

“Sir, this is First Lieutenant Bamberger, Special Forces, MAC/V/SOG, Psy war ops, She is key to my mission witch is classified, sir.”

Kilgore shook his head and told Willard,

“Her safety is on you, son, if she gets greased I am NOT taking the fall for it, do you hear me, boy?”

“Yes, Sir, I understand”

Colonel Kilgore had already learned of Lance Johnson’s presence and was now bringing him along as he strode the battle zone gushing with him about surfing.

That night at an after combat party, Willard showed him the two possible entry points to the Nung river on a map, and Kilgore pointed out how dangerous they were, telling Willard,

“Those areas are pretty hot, I been in there a few weeks ago and we lost a few birds up there now and again.”

Kilgore’s aid told him about the surfing conditions at one of the entry points and about how they were ‘good breaks’. Kilgore shouted at him,

“Christ why didn’t you say so, there aint a decent break in this whole shitty country..

That appeared to settle the issue.

Bamberger traded her beret for a steel pot helmet with a cloth cover and made sure her C.A>R. 15 assault rifle was locked and loaded. The Viet Cong would not be in any hurry to give up this point. As the regiment flew toward their target, the speakers on the sides of some of the helos began to play “Ride of the Valkyries” by Richard Wagner. Both Willard and Bamberger looked at each other confused and then at Kilgore. He grinned maniacally and exclaimed,

“Wagner, It scares the HELL out of the ‘slopes’ and my boys LOVE IT!”

Stefani wondered, not for the first time, if one is sane but everyone around them is insane, does that make one insane?

Then she stopped short and had to ask herself,

‘Am I sane?”


	2. The mouth of madness

A regiment of air cavalry is composed of two to three types of aircraft. Utility/attack birds, Scout birds and or dedicated attack birds. In this case, the 1/9 was flying with a regiment’s worth of Hueys modified with either .50 caliber gun mounts or line of sight incendiary missile pods. They were fortified with AH6 little bird recon craft fitted with gun mounts. Colonel Kilgore ordered the regiment to fly in low. Almost low enough to leave a wake in the water over which they flew. The din of the music blaring from some of the choppers had its desired effect. The main force Viet Cong garrison was running to get away from the overwhelming noise.

Added to this, was the fire coming from the armed birds. The missile pods were being ‘ripple fired’, which meant that the missiles fired one after another, rather than all at once. This created an effectively unceasing barrage of flaming death. It was destroying bridges, roads, the roofs of houses, and in some cases people trying to flee.

The regiment arrived at the village on this point break virtually unopposed and began to dismount from their birds. Willard hopped out a little ahead of Bamberger for the simple reason that this was in fact her first actual combat engagement. Despite that, she knew she had to get out of the bird, stay mobile, and fire at the enemy. The Main force Viet Cong were no respecters of fussy western gender manners and would kill her just as soon as any man.

Stefani Bamberger flicked the selector switch of her weapon, a Carbine Automatic Rifle model fifteen to three round burst. This would allow her to keep up a good rate of fire, but still keep a measure of fire discipline, aiming her shots, and making her ammunition last.

Duck, fire,, run, duck down fire, advance, even as she did this, a part of her mind stood aside and observed that she was dispassionately killing people who had never personally done her any harm. Lt. Bamberger looked around her and realized that there was less fire coming from the American lines than there should be, given their sheer numbers. The deficit was not enough to negatively affect the outcome of the battle as the three companies of Viet Cong were facing a Regiment of U.S. Cavalry. Looking at the various soldiers, she realized that some of them were

Either firing into the air or

Firing at the ground or,

Pretending they had to fix their weapons or

Just pretending to be busy with something else.

The answer was obvious of course; they did not want to kill people. A perfectly sane and reasonable reaction, Stefani herself was leaning heavily on her frankly harrowing and dehumanizing Special Forces training to help her turn living human beings into dead human beings.

The Viet Cong ran from the air barrage, but now that the fight was man to man, they were fighting back. An air cavalry trooper went down in front and to one side of Bamberger and she leap-frogged forward and stood over him popping shots at the female V.C. that shot him. She fell dead with two lethal chest wounds and a killing shot to the head. Then Bamberger shouldered her weapon and pulled at the man’s flak vest. He must have weight a good 150 pounds and his loadout took that up to an even 200. It was all Lt. Bamberger could do to get him back to the wall from which she was fighting. At that, she had to shout at another Air Cav trooper,

“God Damn you, HELP ME WITH HIM!” The other trooper lifted him up and said, 

“I got him, Ma’am”

“Good Man!”

Her inability to lift a two hundred pound weight was no slight; there were many others, men of slim build who could not have lifted him without help.

Colonel Kilgore ordered his Medical Evacuation Choppers to land and pick up his wounded. He told his men,

“I want my wounded out of there in 15 minutes, get my men OUT!”

One Medical Evacuation chopper landed in a large courtyard and began to take on wounded men. As it did so, Lt. Bamberger saw a Vietnamese woman pushing to get in, she seemed to be hiding something in her Coolie hat and before she could get in close to the bird, Lt. Bamberger pumped three shots into her causing her to drop to the stones. An object rolled from the hat and exploded harmlessly away from the bird. The Chopper took on four more hurt kids and took off, moving them safely to the rear.

Lt. Bamberger continued to advance, ahead of her a woman in black pajamas tried to strike her with the butt of an AK47 assault rifle. Bamberger blocked the blow with her own rifle and threw her own weight onto the woman then Bamberger struck the woman in her abdomen with her bayonet, pulled quickly from her sheath. The woman was still trying to fight, swiping at Stefani with the business end of her rifle, and so Bamberger had to stab her again and yet a third time. The breath went out of the woman and the light in her eyes dimmed. Bamberger saw another V.C. looking at her, and so she took up the other woman’s AK47, firing it at the other V.C. fighter. Bamberger kept doing that until the AK’s magazine was empty, then she cast it aside and took up her own weapon.

Lt. Stefani Bamberger continued to move forward. Firing and by the time she realized anything outside of her battle vision, the fight was moving beyond the village and onto the beach.

With no warning, a teenaged boy came out of a hut right in front of her and pointed a Tokarav pistol at her. Quite literally, without thinking, her rifle came up and her finger contracted on the trigger. The round already chambered obligingly left the chamber. Traveled down the rifled barrel and went into the boy’s face faster than the speed of sound turning his face and head into a wreaked ruin.

Stefani’s logical clinical thinking mind was almost a tourist as she dealt death in this battle. It stood off to the side, horrified as human being after human being ceased to be by her hands. She looked down at her feet and saw a badly wounded Air Cav Sergeant that the boy had shot. Stefani came back to herself and shouted,

“MEDIC we got a man here!”

Stefani helped the man stay conscious by talking to him and gripping his hand. The medic stabilized him and put him onto the MEDEVAC chopper, his verdict was that the Sergeant would be fine.

The battle wass ending in the American’s favor, this was no longer Charlie’s point. This was now Colonel Bill Kilgore’s point.

Kilgore looked at her hard and just said,

“I will be fucked, I will be fucking fucked!”

With that, he moved off to see to his other men. 

Lt. Bamberger sat down with weary finality opposite Captain Willard. Willard was looking at her with a critical eye, as if he was trying to figure her out, as indeed he was.

Willard pointed at her left arm and told her,

“You’re bleeding Lieutenant.”

Ah, Stefani thought to herself that would be why her arm was throbbing with pain. Stefani remembered that the blade of that female V.C.’s rifle had been fixed and during the melee she slashed at Stefani. It wasn’t a deep wound and was not even impairing her use of the arm, but it WAS bleeding and could become infected.

Willard spotted a Medical corpsman and ordered him,

“Specialist, the Lt. is wounded, see to her arm.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The Specialist looked at the wound and then ripped her sleeve open to let him get at the area. He then cleaned the wound, spread it with anti biotic powder, and began stitching it up. The act of stitching up the wound actually hurt worse than the injury itself had. Stefani laughed, then said,

“Motherfucker”

As the corpsman pulled the suture tight and tied it. He then bandaged it and told her,

“Try not to walk on the injury, Ma’am.”

“That will do Specialist, thank you.”

Willard spoke up again, this time talking about Kilgore,

“That crazy bastard had guys out there surfing, can you believe that?”

“No, Captain, I can’t believe that, no shit?”

“No Shit Lieutenant, he made Lance and two other guys surf while Charlie was shooting at them and mortaring the beach.”

“Wow, Sir, if you will accept my professional clinical opinion, that is shit nuts.”

“That’s your clinical opinion, is it, Lieutenant?”

“Uh well sir, that is, I uh,”

“Relax, Lieutenant, that’s my unprofessional nonclinical opinion as well.”

Bamberger looked up as she heard Kilgore talking loudly; he was lamenting the negative effect of the napalm drop he ordered on the surfing conditions.

Bamberger’s attention drifted away from the Colonel and back to Willard in time to hear him tell her,

“O.K., Lieutenant, let’s move out, draw a fresh blouse from the regiment stores and get to the boat, I imagine Chief doesn’t want to stick around here any longer than he has to.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Bamberger snapped to and moved fast to obey the captain’s order.

Captain Willard went to collect Gunner’s mate 3rd class Johnson, telling Kilgore,

“Lance is an artist, he can’t surf those waves, it would be an embarrassment, you understand, right?


	3. The Path of Paranoia

One of the Hueys of the first of the ninth, the one carrying the Patrol Boat Riverene code named ‘Streetgang’ hovered low over the joining part of the Mekong delta and the mouth of the Nung River. It disconnected the cargo cable that held the nearly flat-bottomed prefabricated reinforced fiberglass boat and dropped it into the water. Fortunately, the boat was made of stern stuff and all that would need to be done was to recalibrate a few gun sights.

Chief Philips looked at Captain Willard and Lieutenant Bamberger and told them,

“We need to get goin’ if we’re goin’ sir, ma’am.”

The two Special Forces officers climbed aboard the boat and PBR ‘Streetgang’ revved up it’s engines and started up the river against the current. Engineman 3rd class Hicks watched the motor carefully, knowing he would have to baby the motor to keep it up to power on this trip. Gunner’s mate 3rd Johnson sat in the gun cupola at the bow of the PBR and Gunner’s mate 3rd Miller sat in the cupola at the stern, each scanning the riverbanks for any left over V.C. from the battle that had just been fought.

Willard and Bamberger heaved their rucksacks and loadouts onto the boat and threw themselves over the plastic/fiberglass rim of the hull. When they were aboard and had stowed their gear, Chief nodded at Chef and the latter sailor revved the engine and started the Patrol Boat Riverene or ‘Pibber’ on her journey. Ben Willard now had an additional item in his gear that was decidedly unauthorized. The item was a competition style surf board or ‘stick’ decorate with the Air Cavalry shield. He had lifted Colonel Bill Kilgore’s personal ‘stick’.

The crew of PBR ‘Streetgang though that was funny as hell.

Willard sat forward of the Pibber’s bridge and read the file on Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. He shook his head, trying to figure out what made this man, with his record break bad and turn into someone the U.S. Army wanted dead and was willing to send two people to ‘deal with him’. He of course, did not know about the fate of Captain Richard Colby, the man who previously failed to kill Kurtz and now had joined him.

Concealing that fact was something Stefani was ordered to do by General Corman. That ate at her; she respected Ben Willard, both as an officer and as a man, and hated lying to him by omission. The General’s thick Oklahoma accent rasped once again in her head as she remembered,

“Now, Lieutenant, when or if he needs to know, he’ll be told, until then you say nothing, you need to know, at this time, Captain Willard does NOT need to know at this time, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

“Very good.”

The truth was, Lieutenant Stefani Bamberger did NOT understand, not at all, why did Willard NOT need to know about the previous attempt on Kurtz’ life and the officer just as vetted and distinguished as Willard that had betrayed every oath to serve Kurtz in his madness?

The next day PBR Streetgang pulled over by the left bank of the Nung because Chef wanted to forage for fruit and other foodstuffs to supplement the stores already on hand. Captain Willard elected to go with him to watch his back and ordered Bamberger to remain with ‘Streetgang’. Bamberger sat on the bow looking around, trying to keep alert, when without warning; she thought she saw a Vietnamese woman on the bank staring at her piercingly. The woman was a dead ringer for her V.C. guerilla Bamberger Stabbed to death at the Battle of Surfer’s beach. Then Bamberger realized she WAS that woman. Just as she was about to fire, she realized no one was there. The other riverbank was empty.

Bamberger looked at the space in the river again; no one there, then she rubbed her face with her left hand and shook her head to shake the unreason from it.

PBR ‘Streetgang was tucked in under the jungle canopy deliberately to avoid Colonel Kilgore’s command Huey. The man wanted his board back as was deliberately abandoning his own regiment to retrieve it.

She looked back at the boat in time to see Chef running at top speed with a bucket of mangoes in one hand and his rifle In the other, Willard was behind him and Chef was yelling almost incoherently,

“Tiger! A fuckin’ TIGER!”

 

He then Continued in hysterical muttering,

“Never get out of the boat, NEVER get out of the boat, NEVER GET OUT OF THE BOAT!” this was followed by manic, almost lunatic laughter.

Willard reflected to himself,

‘Never get out of the boat, that’s god damned right. Kurtz got out of the boat. Kurtz got out of the boat so long ago he was never going to get back.’

 

As the boat pulled away, all Chef could do was gibber about the encounter with the tiger and repeat that getting eaten by a tiger was NOT on the list of things the navy trained him to be ready for.

Clean laughed and Johnson just stared noncommittally in a way that made both Willard and Chief uncomfortable. Bamberger applied her clinical training and realized the boy was in danger of slipping into possible dissociative paranoia, then she realized, he wasn’t catatonic, he was high.

That night, she spotted both Johnson and Chef smoking marijuana. They did not know she saw them and she left it at that. At this point she could hardly blame them, Bamberger was starting to see things that were not there, and she was straight.

Willard continued to stay off by himself. He was determined to reach his mission and complete it. He saw his hosts as unwelcome burdens and even seemed to view Stefani the same way. He gave her the grudging respect due someone who had proved they could hold up their end, but still treated her, as someone he would rather was not there.

Soldiers did not behave that way, assassins behaved that way. It was then that Lt. Stefani Bamberger retreated to the stern of the boat and unsealed the file General Corman and Colonel Lucas told her was for HER eyes only.

Willard, Benjamin L, Captain, USA MAC/V/SOG

Unbeknownst to her, in the Conn of the boat, Willard opened another file. This file was labeled,

“First Lieutenant Stefani Bamberger, %th Special Forces Group/Project Boudicca.”


	4. The blade of bedlam

The next day found Patrol Boat Riverene ‘Streetgang’ at the shores of a Fire Support Base that looked like a heavy supply dump and storage depot. Willard, Lance, and Clean were to go ashore and get the list of supplies and fuel for the Pibber, Bamberger, Chef and Chief Phillips would stay with the boat. That was just as well, it would give Stefani time to look over her Intel files on both Willard and Colby.

Chef looked toward a stage set up near the center of the Fire Support Base and exclaimed,

“Hot Dayum they’s women up there, aw man they’s playboy models dancin’ around an’ shit.”

“Not really my sort of thing, Engineman Hicks.”

Before he could respond, Chief Phillips told him harshly,

“Mind your station sailor, if you got time to jabber with the Lieutenant, you got time to do a check on those engines. You don’t need to be staring at them floozies and getting’ all worked up, anyway.”

Bamberger read the letter Colby sent to his wife before dropping off the map.

“Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, I don’t love you, I’m never coming back, just forget it, forget everything!

Stefani looked up from reading that in shock. The third line’s words seared into her brain.

‘Sell the kids’.

Colby had to all appearances suffered a complete psychotic break, transitioning from stable functional sanity to absolute sociopathic mania.

She then paged to Willard’s file. To say this man suffered from re entry problems was an understatement. It was so bad that on the most frequent trip home he divorced her under a settlement of no contest and let her have everything. Even the man’s own son was terrified of him. Bamberger thought about it,

Walter E. Kurtz, Gone insane, a murderous sociopath. Richard Colby, Psychotic break exacerbated by Kurtz, Benjamin Willard, walking the ragged edge despite her first impression of the man. How could she have misread him so badly?

Willard, sane? This man was just three short stops on the crazy train from being Colby.

At that moment, Stefani Bamberger felt a cold hard shiver of terror as she considered herself. She was a Green Beret connected to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies, and Observations Group. She was now under many of the same stresses these men had suffered, and she divorced her husband when she came home after completing Green Beret training. There were no children because they had been newlyweds, but coming home she realized, he was going to want her to be the good little wifey, and she was something else now.

The question was now, what in heaven and on Earth was she?

For much of the time she wore a mask. A mask born of pretense and false clinical bravado. This mask shielded her, at least to some degree from thinking about how uncomfortable she was around the five men on this boat. She used it to hide how much she sometimes wanted to run away and hide under a bed to keep a terrible black thing from finding her.

Captain Willard and Gunner’s mates Miller and Johnson returned from their detail with the supplies they needed and even a few extras, such as several cases of chocolate bars, three bottles of Jim Beam and a stack of nudie magazines.

Miller also threw a rectangular pink box at Bamberger and told her,

“Merry Christmas, Lootenint.”

Looking at it she saw it was a box of tampons. Bamberger would have been insulted, but then realized they might well come in handy. Miller wasn’t being a jerk, in his own blunt way he was trying to be nice.

The Patrol Boat Riverene ‘Streetgang’ revved to life, pulled away from shore, and was on its way once more.

Stefani Bamberger did not have to wonder from where such supplies had come, many special operations personnel used tampons and maxi pads to staunch wounds in the field because of their superior absorbency to conventional pressure bandages. It was why Navy Seals wore panty hose under their jungle utilities to ward off leeches and put condoms over the business ends of their rifles to keep out the moisture of the jungle.

The field was the field and being embarrassed beat the crap out of being dead.

It just brought home the reality that what was normal out here in the bush would get you locked up as a loon back home.

Perhaps it was true, what you had to become to protect the delicate sensibilities of civilians made you irretrievably unfit to live among them.

There was ‘The World’ other wise known as the Continental United States, and then there was the ‘Nam, A.K.A. “In’ Country, AKA “The shit.

Once you have been to the latter, could you EVER go home to the former? Could she ever live among the real people now, and did she even want to try?


	5. The Crudding Creeps

PBR ‘Streetgang’ was approaching a small reserve Fire Support base, and as the came near it, Willard recognized the ‘Huey’ sitting on the single pad.

Clean spoke up first,

“Hey, it’s them girls, from the titty show, Captain, look.”

Willard squinted and answered Clean,

“So it is.”

Chief Phillips told Willard,

“Captain, we can’t sail in this damned monsoon, we need to stop while it blows over” 

Willard looked at the sheets of rain coming down as well as the waves starting to buffet the river and swamp the shores. As much as he hated to admit it, in this case, Chief Phillips knew his business. They would have to stop. PBR ‘Streetgang’ steered into the shoreline and Chef moored her to the bank. Willard then had an idea. 

The only reason he could think of for a helicopter full of playboy bunnies to be sitting on a pad in the middle of the deep boonies was that they were out of gas.

The promoter from the United Service Organization was obviously livid that the army or at least the local base commander would not give them any fuel.

Willard remembered Clean and Lance and how much they had enjoyed the show back at the big base and inspiration struck.

“Chief, how much fuel do we have, how many barrels?”

“You loaded us up good Captain, we got enough to get up and back a couple of times, if we wanted to.”

“Do you think we could spare one or two barrels for those nice girls over there in that chopper?”

“Captain what are you thinkin?”

“Chief, I am thinking we’re stuck here sitting out this monsoon, and as long as we’re here, maybe we could use some female companionship.”

Willard got the O.K. from Chief Phillips to trade away two barrels of diesel fuel and then he proceeded to the V.I.P. tent in witch the girls were staying. Lt. Bamberger was left in command by default and was surprised at Willard’s displays of warmth. First, at the playful and effectively harmless prank on that bombastic fool Kilgore, and now this.  
Lt. Stefani Bamberger did not know what to think. On one hand this could well alleviate the stresses building up in the group, on the other hand he was making three women whore themselves out to get a ride out of this giant outhouse.

Bamberger stayed o nthe boat, to keep herself as far away as possible from what she knew was happening I nthat tent and in that helicopter. She knew what they were doing and having to think about it made her want to run awa, or be sick, or kill them all. Bamberger squashed that down as did her best to keep it together.

Watching each man go into the tent and have their ‘alone time’ with the Playboy bunnies, Bamberger did her best to think about something else. Bamberger noticed punctiliously that Captain Benjamin Willard and Chief Phillips pointedly did NOT take a turn in the V.I.P. tent with the girls. She turned from the sight of the riverside trysts in the Huey and was shocked to see five people on the boat, two women two men and one boy all Vietnamese and all from the village on Surfer’s point.

One woman had three bullet holes in her body, one in the head and two in her chest, the second was bruised about the head and shoulders and had multiple stab wounds in her stomach and chest. The two men were standing there despite several fatal gunshot wounds each and the boy stood with his wrecked ruin of a face gaping at her. The boy raised his pistol to point at her and fired.

Bamberger screamed and fell backward into the boat scrabbling at her chest with her hands. Captain Willard heard her scream and was in the boat; rifle at the ready when he crouched beside her grabbed her Shoulders and shouted,

“Bamberger, what’s the matter what happened, what are you screaming about?”

Bamberger looked around at the boat’s interior and realized they were alone, Just the two of them and Chief Phillips. No other people were there.

“They were,…the people,…they were,…I, I thought I,…”

“You thought what, who did you think was here?”

Stefani Bamberger’s voice trailed off, and then she told him as she stood up,

“N, Nothing, it was nothing, Captain, I, I’m O.K. sir.”

Clean, Lance, and Chef returned each in their turn from their ‘private time’ with the three bunnies. They seemed, if not relaxed, then certainly less high strung.

Later that evening the monsoon slacked to a mere rain shower and the men took turns using the rain as an impromptu shower. All five of them by turns, stripped and scrubbed before drying off in one of the onshore tents. Lt. Bamberger realized that she needed to clean herself to stave off jungle rot the creeping crud and any number of other possible problems. When Willard washed himself, she stood over him and watched his back. She stripped herself and then climbed out of the boat and into the water. Willard stood watch over her as she scrubbed at herself occasionally having to scrub certain areas harder than others. Bamberger paid particular attention to her feet, her underarms and between her legs. The three areas most likely to collect the kind of crud that could do her in by inches.  
Stefani Bamberger could not help thinking that Captain Willard just watched her and the area around her to make sure she was in no danger. Willard did not leer or make comments; he just kept a good Overwatch. 

That was when she realized, none of the men aboard P.B.R. ‘Streetgang thought of her in a sexual way, to them she was not even a ‘real woman’. Bamberger climbed aboard and dried herself under the canopy of the boat. She had to sit wrapped in a tarp while she waited for her sodden uniform to dry out. She had dispensed with underthings when she realized they only got in the way out here.

Now, in a combat situation, should she be relieving herself or tending to some other biological housekeeping, she had only one layer of clothing to manage where it counted. Back in ‘The World’ dressing this way would get her labeled as a whore or a slut, out here, it just meant she had a higher life expectancy.


	6. The teeth of Tartarus

The Conquered Surfer’s point was behind them, the supplies laden Fire Support Base was behind them, the girls were now behind them. Any illusion of safety was now behind them.

The six travelers had been on the river for three days and Lt. Bamberger was glad any fussy female body shyness had been beaten out of her in Special Forces Training. She had already long since discarded her panties and was currently squatting over the stern of ‘Streetgang” with her Utilities trousers around her ankles. Stefani was casually urinating into the Nung.

Gunner’s mate Miller looked back at her and kept staring, Bamberger finished her business and pulled her trousers up, telling the 17 year old boy,

“Enjoy the show, did you?”

Bamberger relished the red-faced stammer this elicited from him.

Willard noted with a raised eyebrow that she was ‘going commando’ and nodded approvingly.

Several hours later, Lt. Bamberger was on the bow of the Pibber when she saw a Sampan approaching on the water headed downstream. By now, everyone was on edge knowing where they were and how much danger they were probably in, Lt. Bamberger was no different. She held her CAR 15 at the ready with a round chambered and was almost mentally daring the people on the Vietnamese riverboat to do ‘something’ Chief alerted Captain Willard to the presence of the sampan and told the other officer,

“We got a sampan; we’re going to check it out, just a routine check.

Willard objected and told Chief Phillips to ’’Let this one slide, my mission is more important, chief.”

Chief shot back that the V.C. guerillas often used these sampans to run supplies to the V.C. in South Vietnam and after a series of shouts and objections, Chief ordered the boat to stop over the megaphone in Vietnamese and they did so. It was then  
Chief ordered Chef to

“Go aboard, and check out that boat.

Before doing so Chef told Chief, There’s nothing in it, just some fish maybe some rice, and shit, it’s nothing.” Chief had to repeatedly shout at Chef to get aboard the sampan and search it when Chef did so but in such a manic angry fearful manner that he was frightening the Vietnamese peasants. His search turned up nothing until one of the women sat on a yellow tin can to keep it from being searched, when her resistance prompted suspicion. Gunner’s mate Miller, who the crew called Mr. Clean or simply Clean jumped aboard and began pushing the people aboard the Sampan around shouting orders in English, a language none of the peasants understood. By this point,   
Lt. Bamberger was getting nervous and Captain Willard was becoming visibly angry. That was when there was a loud sharp crack, the sound of a rifle going off. When they heard the sound, Clean, Chef, and Johnson opened up on the peasants and killed them where they stood. Searching the Sampan Willard found a wounded Vietnamese woman in the little shelter on the sampan.

She was barely alive, if she did not get some medical attention in the next hour she would die. Chief Phillips told Captain Willard,

“There’s an aid hospital near here, we can take her to it, they’ll fix her up.”

The debate over her fate began instantly. Clean wanted to leave her, Lance wanted to save her, Captain Willard wanted to continue on their way and Chef just wanted to get moving. That was when a second gun shot was heard, identical to the first. The Vietnamese woman fell dead, effectively closing the issue.

When the shooting stopped, Chef went to the yellow overturned tin can and upended it showing the hidden object was a tan puppy of indeterminate breed. Chef brought it aboard the PBR and he and lance commence to argue over its possession, Lance finally winning. 

The face painted nearly catatonic boy took the dog and began petting it, holding it close as if it was his most prized possession.

 

The final shot, as with the first shot had come from Lt. Stefani Bamberger’s rifle. Stefani just stood there, not knowing why she fired either shot. Willard looked her up and down, then turned to Chief and told him,

“Now we can go, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

 

Willard looked at Chief and told him darkly,

“I told you not to stop.”

Willard, came upon Bamberger later as evening approached and asked her,

“What the hell, Lt., what’s going on in that head?”

Bamberger sat listlessly eating a candy bar from one of the boxes and said nothing until Willard demanded,

“Answer me, Lt. I’m talking to you!”

“We had to move,…the longer we sat there the bigger a target we were. We don’t know who those people were, maybe they were harmless maybe not, but sitting there in front of god and everybody with our privates in our hands was just going to get us killed, Sir.”

Willard looked around and rubbed a hand across his mouth, then he looked at the Lt. and told her,

“From now on, you don’t shoot unless I say, you don’t eat unless I say, you don’t even take a fucking dump unless you ask me and I say you can, do you get me, Lt.?”

“Yes sir, I understand.”

“Good, now we have lesson two in how to follow fucking orders, you are ordered by me to hand over your fucking files, and papers, anything you got relevant to this mission, right now, Lt.”

Lt. Bamberger answered almost robotically,

“Yes, Sir.”

She then handed him the files General Corman gave her.

Willard looked at them and looked back at her.

“When were you gonna tell ME about this horseshit?”

“I was ordered to keep this classified until we reached the Do Lung Bridge and the U.S. outpost there. We were supposed to get updated orders from Nha Trang and the General.”

“Uh huh, well listen up the General can kiss my ass, MAC/V/SOG can kiss my ass and you know what, Lt. you can kiss my ass too, come to that.. This is my Mission and I am running this bitch from now on, and that goes for you, that goes for you, Chief Philips, and you know what, that goes for you two fucking potheads, Lance and Chef, too.

Now MOVE THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT BOAT!”

Willard looked at Lt. Bamberger. All this time he tried to figure her out. She seemed as if she was terrified of something, as if a monster was on her as like white on rice. He first noticed back in that trailer in Nha Trang when they were listening to that recording of Kurtz. The woman had been scared shitless


	7. The chasm of chaos

Captain Benjamin Willard sat on the edge of the Pibber’s portside hull watching Lt. Bamberger. She was sitting in the stern not doing anything, just as he told her to do. Willard looked at her and did not like the way her eyes seemed to shine at odd moments. It was as if she was going insane by inches, and trying hard to NOT go insane at the same time. Willard was not sure what scared him more, Lance, on acid, Chef toking on weed, or Bamberger trying to NOT be crazy.

Willard looked at his watch and told Bamberger,

“Eat you lunch and hydrate.”

She obediently did so, opening a can of C-Rat beanie weenie and eating it cold, then drinking from her canteen.

The over strict reginin he subjected her to actually seemed to provide her with some confort, shoring up her at best shakey grip on reality.

Lance was almost as bad. Sitting in his gun cupola, face smeared with the camouflaged face paint he bought at that supply depot and petting that damned scruffy puppy dog, so far gone on acid that he wasn’t even on the same planet anymore. 

Then there was Chef, the Cajun dope-smoking mechanic who Willard could only HOPE was not high right now.

The only two people even close to being straight were Chief Phillips, the Chief of the boat, and Mr. Clean the seventeen-year-old ghetto kid who this jungle was seriously freaking out. Willard felt like the only person he could really count on was himself, and even there he wasn’t prepared to take that to the bank.

Lt. Stefani Bamberger sat in her corner and ate her lunch, just as THE CAPTAIN told her to. She still saw things, like the first women she killed and that boy from the Village and sometimes even stranger things. She KNEW in a detached part of her mind that what was happening was not normal or even safe, but it was as if she was slowly starting to lose her mind. It really started at the Sampan, when she honestly thought that the first person she killed was on the sampan that was why she shot. Then at the end of that, she thought the wounded survivor was the dead woman again, as if she just refused to stay dead as a well-behaved corpse ought to.

Doing as THE CAPTAIN told her was a safe harbor of order for her in the raging storm of unreason that seemed to lurk at the edges of her mind.

The Pibber reached the Do Lung River and the fortified bridge that guarded it. The bridge was under fire from either V.C. or NVA forces on one side of the river. Willard told Bamberger, 

“Stay here, behave yourself, be a good girl and maybe I’ll let you have a candy bar.”

Stefani nodded and answered,

“Yes, Sir.”

That turned out to be the easiest thing Willard had to do as Chief told him,

“We can’t continue, it’s a mess up there, Captain, we need to go back, Hell, Captain, Your man is probably dead already anyway we HAVE to turn back, it’s the only way to save ourselves.”

Chief Phillips and the rest of the crew still thought Captain Willard and Lt. Bamberger were going to arrest Kurtz and bring him back for his crimes, of which Willard had not told them. That was reasonable as that was the cover story and they had no reason to disbelieve it.

“Chief if you try to turn this boat back I am going to kill you and as many of your crew as it takes to get this through all of your thick idiot navy skulls. This mission is going to happen if I have to pilot and crew this boat with just me and Bamberger over there.”

Then Willard realized he had to check with the bridge’s comm shed to see if Nha Trang had sent that message. He looked around and told Bamberger,

“Lt. I order you to protect the mission, if Chief or anyone else tries to take this boat out of here and turn back I order you to kill them.”

“Yes, Sir.”

THE CAPTAIN gave her an order, and so Stefani took her rifle from him locked and loaded it and stood watching the crew of PBR ‘Streetgang’.

Chief looked at her and realized that this crazy bitch was so far gone she would kill them all just for THINKING of turning back. 

Willard then went to look for the C.O. of this outpost.

What Captain Willard saw on the bridge was as bad if not worse than anything he had seen up to now. Morale was gone, these men were not fighting for any mission they were fighting for their lives, and any time a boat came by as many as could fit on it deserted. Willard looked around frantically and asked one Corporal,

“Do you know who is in charge here?”

“The man answered,

“Yeah,”

then walked off.

Willard had to ask another man, a Sergeant this time, “Sergeant who is in charge on this bridge?”

The man looked around, dazed, and then caught sight of Willard’s subdued captain’s rank patches on his collar points. When he focused his bleary eyes on them, he answered,

“Aint you?.”

“Sergeant, my name is Captain Ben Willard I am expecting a high clearance message from SOG/OP 39 Nha Trang, do you have it?”

“Yes, sir here it is, it came in yesterday, where have you been sir?”

Willard declined to answer, instead taking the dispatch, and asking the Sergeant,

“What’s your name, what’s going on around here, how bad is it?”

“Weathers, Charlie hates us and it’s about as bad as it gets. I figure if we don’t get relieved soon we’re all going to die.

Willard sat down next to one soldier who was armed with an M-79 grenade launcher. This man had Specialist’s rank on his collar points and another disturbing grin. Captain Willard asked him,

“What’s the story, son?”

“I aint yer son, sir, I’m the Roach. I’m killin’ Charlie. He’s out there, I know he is. A V.C. Sniper. I’m going to get him, you watch.”

As Willard watched, Roach wrist flicked the weapon’s breech open and slid in a rifle grenade shell. He then wrist flicked it closed, snapping the breech lock with his thumb.

“Now, you watch Captain, It’s magic time.”

Roach breathed in, gazed out into the deep dark murk, and fired. The shell hit home and exploded and suddenly the sniper fire from the opposite bank ended. Roach again loaded his weapon, ejecting the previous shell and sliding in another, that shell too, flew to it’s mark and yet another member of the Viet Cong ceased firing, presumably because he or she ceased breathing.

Roach fired, again and again, calmly dispassionately, almost as if he were shooting skeet or hunting quail. Each time he fired into the deep blackness, he hit his mark. It was uncanny.

Willard rose and returned to the PBR ‘Streetgang’. Willard stepped into the boat. Captain Willard looked at Bamberger and told her,  
“Just like your orders detailed, Lt., Colby went rouge on us, he’s gone. There is something else, Nha Trang says I am supposed to watch you for signs of mental stress or incapacity and if found I am supposed to subdue you for return.”

“I don’t understand, Sir.”

“Nha Trang is playing us, you were supposed to watch me and I was supposed to watch you, they were playing us both for fools. They were probably planning on listing your mission a failure no matter WHAT you did, Lt., just so they would have the excuse, the precedent to declare that bears can’t dance.”

Willard was just about to move to tell Chief Phillips tome further up the river, when he stopped, went to the locker he was using to keep his personal gear and took something out of it. He handed the object to Lt. Bamberger telling her in an almost fatherly voice,

“You’re a good girl.”

It was a Hershey’s candy bar with almonds. Stefani unwrapped it and ate it as if she were feeding fuel into a machine. There seemed to be almost no enjoyment or enthusiasm in the action. Stefani dropped the wrapper over the side into the Nung River as the boat motor came to life and sped them on their way.


	8. The depth of dementia

The Do Lung Bridge was behind Patrol Boat Riverene ‘Streetgang’. Also behind them was any illusion of safety. This was Charlie’s country and everyone knew it.

Lance crouched in his bow gun cupola petting his dog and zapped out of his mind on acid, Clean sat in his stern cupola swiveling the twin 50-caliber guns back and forth, convinced he could see enemies plotting his death. Chef, just manned his engines and blathered inanities about how allegedly,

“No sweat man, we’ll, be fine, it’s cool, it’s cool, it’s cool.”

Willard alternated between watching the riverbanks and keeping an eye on the seemingly catatonic Lt. Bamberger. Willard listened closely at her and realized she was singing children’s songs to herself. That was fine as long as it kept her out of his hair and quiet.

It seemed like hours had gone by, or perhaps it was only minutes fire came from the treeline raking the PBR and it occupants. Lance, Chef, Clean Willard and Lt. Bamberger fired outward at the attackers. Their return fire was almost as willy-nilly as the attackers assault.

That was when Clean died. It happened so quickly and so without preamble that it was almost as if the young man tripped and fell from his place at his gun station, then he wasn’t moving and blood was spreading from under his prone body.

Lance reacted by hosing that side of the tree covered bank with his guns. He did not stop until Chief screamed at him to do so. Chief fell on Clean’s body checking for life signs. When he found none, Chief began to weep. He seemed almost inconsolable as if he had lost his own son. Chef too, was shocked and distraught by the young man’s death. This simply could not be

Chef and Chief lifted Clean’s body out of the stern cupola once the attack ceased and covered him with the tarpaulin that once covered the fuel drums.

Willard tried to speak to Chief Phillips, 

“Chief, I’m sorry, I,”

“Shut your ass, Willard, I don’t want to hear it.”

Clean’s death hit Chief Phillips hardest of all, and it was clear he blamed Captain Willard directly for it. Even Chef and Lance seemed to come out of it when they realized there was still danger. Chef looked at Willard and told him,

“This is bullshit man, completely fucked up. I liked Clean; I don’t like you, man.”

Willard told the Engineman,

“That’s sir, to you.”

“Man, go fuck yourself.”

Lance’s period of coherence was shockingly brief. Hesat back at his station in the forward cupola and seemed to sulk, but in reality, this was a much deeper malaise. Then he realized Clean was really dead and began a high pitched keening wail.

It was then, in the middle of a mumbled chorus of “Pop-goes-the-weasel” that Bamberger’s voice trailed off into silence. She stood up and looked around, as if realizing where and more importantly whom she was. She also realized that Gunner’s mate 3rd class Tyrone Miller was dead. Bamberger spoke up.

“Captain Willard”

“What is it Lt.?”

Willard sounded more like a frustrated parent addressing a troubled child than he did a commander addressing a subordinate officer.

“How close are we, to the, to the Cambodian border, sir?”

“We passed it about a half an hour ago, the tribesmen that killed Clean were probably Hmong. Are you straight, Lt. Can I count on you to keep your head in the game?”

“Yes, sir, I think so, sir.”

“Good, good, because if you can’t keep your shit straight from here on in we’re all fucked.”

For the first time in an unknown to her period, Stefani Bamberger was fully aware of what was happening, both around her and in her head. She knew that for a time she had lost the capacity for reason and clinically, she even knew why. While she could not be sure her current state of rationality was permanent, she intended to exploit it to regain Captain Willard’s trust. One of the ways Lt. Bamberger saw to do that was to assume the late Gunner’s mate 3rd class Miller’s post in the stern dual .50 cal gun cupola.

Willard saw her do so and watched as she quickly and competently cleared the actions of both weapons, checked the moving parts, worked the cycling mechanisms and reseated the ammunition belts in their proper places before slapping the top breeching covers closed and swiveling the weapon to cover the complete area of effective fire.

Chief Philips noted that she did not hesitate to try to be immediately useful and serve the boat in Clean’s absence. Something that, at least in his perception, Willard had yet to even try to do or be. Willard and his completely asinine mission up this miserable river got Clean killed, and the way things were going it might get them all killed, even that weird confused girl.

Lt. Stefani Bamberger was clear-eyed, and alert, and rational,…right now. She felt sane and clear headed and totally in possession of her faculties,…right now.

Nevertheless, she could feel it, the creeping unreason, and the darkness at midday, the threatening cloud of madness that she had only just managed to get her head above.

At the edges of her vision, sometimes she could see the people she killed, dead and bloody, clearly mortally wounded, but bizarrely standing there as if in mute accusation and conviction of their killer.

Even as she maintained her watch and looked for signs of hostile action from the shore, a part of her mind stood aside and told her,

(You are insane.)

She railed against it, inwardly, she did not want it to be true, because if it was, then she was not a normal stable functional adult, and she most certainly was not anyone who should be trusted with so much as a pair of good quality scissors, let alone a semi-automatic rifle.

(You have suffered a psychotic break brought on by long-term stress and close exposure to and participation in extreme violence.)

(This cannot be, I was trained, I was tested, and I was hardened against the realities of war.)

The voice at the edge of reason spoke again,

(Yes, they trained you, they tested you,…remember how they trained you for the harshness of war.)

Something lurked at the edge of Stefani’s mind, something terrible that she had pushed away. It was like a monster lurking in the dark outside of a placid village, waiting for the watchmen to sleep so that it could strike.

As it threatened to enter the ‘peaceful village’ of her current state of mind, Stefani Bamberger railed against it and screamed, contracting her hands around the dual triggers of her weapons.

“GYAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!”

The .50 caliber rounds raked the trees ruining foliage and, fortuitously causing another party of armed guerrillas to fall, dead and shredded to bloody chunks into the river, effectively causing their ambush to be stillborn as Lance took that as his cue to open fire as well. 

Willard’s only comment was to say,

“Nice catch Lieutenant.”

Therefore, it seemed that fate saw fit to conceal her short fit of madness with the veneer of high battle acumen.

PBR ‘Streetgang sailed further up the river and into a dense bank of fog or mist, and it seemed, into yet another zone of fear and trepidation.

Lt. Stefani Bamberger could look into the mists and almost see the face of a nameless terrible thing. It was as if it was telling her in her mind,

(Soon, you will be mine, and not all the pretentions and rationalizations in the world will save you.)


	9. The primal fear

Lt. Stefani Bamberger stared out into thick and frightening white nothingness for what seemed to be an eternity, then the white mist, started to thin out and, as PBR ‘Streetgang’ came to the sight of a wrecked and ruined aluminum outbuilding, the mist cleared completely.

PBR ‘Streetgang moved toward the shore to scout out the ruins. Captain Willard ordered Bamberger to,

“Stick with the boat, Lt. If anything goes down I want you to go to work, Chief, you be ready to clear out of here if the shit gets thick.”

Willard was dressed in jungle utilities trousers, tactical boots, his steel pot helmet and cover and dog tags. Other than that, his chest was bare, and he wore his sidearm slung low on his hips sidearm, leading the way ahead of him was the muzzle of his M16A1 assault rifle.

Chief motioned for Chef and Lance to follow him, and after the command was repeated, they did so. When chief had the boat moored, he took up his own M16A1 and now all five members of the boat’s company were looking at the shore as if the devil himself might come out to greet them.

What greeted the five, was the sight of a large party of seven to eight men and boys dressed in various styles of O.D> green uniform and carrying various weapons. AK47’s, M1 Carbines, Browning Automatic Rifles, and even a few Thomson sub machine guns.

One of the men shouted something in a language that was not English and Chef immediately responded in the same language.

He told Captain Willard in English,

“It’s French Captain, their speaking French man, it’s OK.”

As the two groups of armed people approached each other and the likelihood of something bad happening increased, Captain Willard held his rifle one handed in the air, and then slowly and elaborately set it on the ground, still keeping his hands in the air once he let go of it. Chief and Lt. Bamberger were the next to put down their weapons and take a similar posture. Lance and Chef saw Chief do so and mimicked his actions.

Lt. Stefani Bamberger looked around and, what she saw in addition to the eight armed Frenchmen was another party of walking dead and bloody Vietnamese men and women. All the people she killed.

She was now unarmed and seemingly at their mercy as they appeared to her to crowd around her, closing for the kill.

That was when Lt. Bamberger collapsed under the weight of assailants that were not there and started weeping.  
As the standoff dissipated, one of the men pointed at Bamberger and several more went to her and lifted her up, helping her walk toward the inland estate.

Chief, told the leader of the armed party,

“We’ve had a man killed, we lost him a few miles back, and we need to bury him.”

The leader answered in heavily accented English,

“We French always honor the dead of our allies, come bring him we will see to him, as well as to your woman.”

Captain Willard, told them,

“Thank you, Lt. Bamberger has some problems; I don’t think she should be continuing with us, since you mention it.”

“She has the Soldier’s lament, she has seen and done, and now struggles under the weight of it, some bear that weight better than others, Captain. The boy seems to suffer the lament as well, does he not, yet you will not leave him behind, non?”

Willard could not argue that and so said nothing as a burial party was hastily formed.

The French wrapped Clean’s body in a canvas tarpaulin and covered it with a tattered flag of the United States from the radio and navigation mast of PBR ‘Streetgang. Chief took off his black beret and put on his tan peaked NCO cap. Everyone stood in formation paying respect to the kid from Detroit who died serving his country. Even Stefani had herself back together enough to make the ad hoc ceremony as proper as it could be.

One of the Frenchmen played ‘taps’ on his bugle and Stefani recited the poem “Home is the hunter”

“Under a wide and starry sky  
Dig me a place and leave me lie  
This be the verse you grave for me  
Home is the man where he longed to be  
Home is the sailor, home from the sea  
And the hunter home from the hill.”

When Clean was in the ground Chief folded that tattered flag in the regulation manner, making it a triangle. Then he presented it to Captain Willard, telling him,

“Please accept Gunner’s mate 3rd class’ Tyron Miller’s flag, from a grateful nation.”

It was a transparent dig at the fact that Chief still blamed Willard directly for Clean’s death.

Later, at an early afternoon supper, the Frenchmen and women were dressed in dressy civilian clothing, suits, and nice dresses, while the remaining crew of PBR Streetgang, were in their jungle utilities, that was except for Lieutenant Bamberger who brought her total gear and issue including her class ‘A’ skirt uniform.

Willard and Chief sat with the head of this plantation at the family table. Chef and Lance sat with the hands at the workman’s table. Stefani was seated at the Children’s table, not because of her gender, but because of her obvious trouble in her metaphorical attic. The French clearly classed her current mental state as childlike and Willard was not able to disagree. 

In any case, if Stefani’s mind was currently childlike, it seemed to be a very well behaved child as she sat quietly, praying when the children did, over the meal, before eating, and then consuming the food in a very decorous and classy manner.

At the adult family table, Captain Willard became inveigled in a heated discussion about the current war and its history. Stefani was not part of that as she was at the children’s table.

One of the young daughters asked her,

“Are you a soldier,” The child asked her this in French, another language Stefani learned to speak. Stefani answered in that same language.

“Yes,…I am a Soldier.”

“Are you sick? You seem sick.”

Stefani answered the child, 

“Yes, I am sick.”

The little girl, then asked,

“If you want, I can ask my mommy to give you some medicine, and then you’ll be all better.”

“I don’t think there is any medicine for what I have.”

The wide-eyed and frankly innocent child asked, quite reasonably,

“What do you have, is it worse than the measles or the pox.”

“I have a sadness. My feelings are broken and I don’t know how to fix them. I think it is because I have seen and done too many bad things.

The child’s governess then told her,

“Adelaide, stop pestering our guest, let her eat, now.”

After the afternoon supper, Stefani found herself in an anteroom with the older daughter, Laure’

Laure, seemed to sense Stefani’s deep depression and emotional damage, and took her by the hand, leading Stefani up to her room.

Once there, Laure started to undress Stefani. Not being fully cognizant of what was going on Stefani let her get as far as undoing her collar and removing her jacket. By the time Stefani’s shirt was off and Laure was trying to kiss her, Stefani came back to herself and said,

“What are you, doing? Wait, no,”

Laure placed a hand on Stefani’s left breast and nibbled at her neck telling her,

“So much sadness, so little comfort…”

Finally, Stefani pushed her back and told her loudly,

“STOP IT, what are you trying to do to me?”

“I am sorry, I was just trying to comfort you, you seem so sad, so much pain.”

“So, so what, you thought you’de just, what, what did you think you were going to do?”

The girl seemed near tears as she said,

“I am sorry, please forgive, I just wanted to make you feel good, men have hurt you, so badly, I can tell, and I wanted to give you a woman’s comfort.”

The dark terrible thing was back, this time closer than ever. It seemed about to overwhelm the Lt. Lt. Bamberger told the girl louder than she needed to,

“GET OUT!”

Then Stefani removed the rest of her uniform and lay in the bed she had been given. She shook with revulsion at what she saw as the teenaged girl’s act of ‘perversion, as she did so, Stefani remembered

It was the second to last phase of Special Forces Training. Stefani was one of only ten trainees remaining. By now, it looked as if she might make it.

That night, the other nine members of her class broke into her room and put a blanket over her face, holding her arms so that she could not defend herself.

They held her legs open and cut her underthings from her body with a field knife. Then each man took his turn raping her by the numbers, thrusting to climax and then getting off to let the next man have a turn. It was the most horrifying and profoundly primal violation and at the time, she never made a sound. She did not scream, she did not cry out, she did not even report it the next morning. The leader of the men was a Colonel who was the oldest man there. He was a thirty eight year old named Walter E. Kurtz.

Stefani woke up from the memory nightmare and screamed, bolting upright in bed and letting forth a piercing screaming cry that everyone in the house heard.

Captain Willard was the first in the room, brandishing his sidearm and looking for the intruder.

“Lt. What’s wrong, where is he, is he V.C. N.V.A., what is it?”

She looked at Willard and told him,

No one is here.”

“Are you alright, Lt?”

“”Captain, I am very, very far from alright.”

“She looked outside and saw the early morning dawn.

“Captain we had better get going, Colonel Kurtz is waiting for us and we mustn’t’ be tardy, it would not be proper to keep him waiting.”

PBR ‘Streetgang’ was crewed, and resupplied and refueled from the French plantation’s stores. Chief was piloting the boat, Lance was in the forward cupola, Willard was by the chief in the pilothouse, Chef had the engines, and Lt. Bamberger now staffed Clean’s post at the rear gun station.

Chef looked back at her several times and mumbled to himself and anyone else who would listen,

“She aint right, somethin’ in her eyes, she just aint right, not no more.”


	10. The Straight Razor

Patrol Boat Riverene ‘Streetgang’ continued on her journey up the Nung River. The five people aboard staffed their stations with an air of seeming diligence and alertness. This was in a few cases just a thin veneer covering each person’s varying level of dysfunction.

Chief Phillips was afraid, angry, and despairing at the journey ahead.

Lance Johnson was sinking further into man-childlike delirium.

Chef was at his engines and looking around at the passing terrain thinking any manner of monsters might jump out at them and all three men missed their friend and crewmate Tyrone ‘Mr. Clean’ Miller, Blaming Captain Willard for his death.

Captain Benjamin L Willard looked around waiting for the next threat to materialize and alternately watching Lieutenant Stefani Bamberger. He now knew the seed of her troubles and felt more than a little pity for her and hatred for the bastards in the army that did this to her and the alleged people in Nha Trang that sent this broken person out here with them.

Stefani Bamberger sat at the rear of the boat staffing Clean’s old post. She was wearing a sweat soaked O.D> green undershirt, a pair of green utility trousers and her socks and boots. Her steel pot was on her head and she had green streaks of camouflage on her face as if wearing warpaint.

That was when a flurry of arrows came in at the boat from both sides of the riverbank. They were small and as they hit they did no damage. Bamberger and Lance opened fire immediately and did not stop until Willard shouted repeatedly,

“They’re just little sticks, they’re harmless, they’re just trying to scare us.”

Bamberger mumbled something unintelligible and squeezed of another burst before stopping; Lance took one of the little arrows, broke it in two, and put each half in his hair, mimicking a gag arrow-in-the-head prop. Chef brandished his M16 and chief looked around to see what was coming next.

The arrows seemed to slack off and the PBR turned a bend in the river when the spear punctured Chief through his back and penetrated all the way through his chest.

As he died, Chief grabbed Willard and started to try to pull him bodily onto the Spearpoint protruding through his chest. Bamberger was about to try to shoot him for daring to threaten her CAPTAIN when the strength left him and he died releasing Willard in his death rattle.

PBR Streetgang was now adrift without her chief pilot. Lance began to keen in a high pitched nasal whine as he clung to the forward conn, Chef looked as if he might either fly into a murderous rage or begin weeping and Bamberger stared at the body as if she had never seen one before. Then she squatted down to look at Chief’s body and caressed his face. She bent down and tenderly kissed the body on the lips and told it,

“Lucky”

She returned to her post mumbling repeatedly, 

“Lucky, Lucky, Lucky, Lucky,..”

That was when Captain Willard told Chef and Lance about his and Bamberger’s mission.

Lance did not seem to care, but Chef was absolutely livid.

“What? Oh that’s just perfect, fuckin’ Vee-it-Naam Mission,…I though you and her were going to blow up a bridge or rescue some flyer or do some commando shit,…You’re goin’ to kill one of our own guys? That’s just perfect.”

“Kurtz has gone insane and now poses a direct threat to the progress of the war; she and I have to address this before it goes any further.”

Chef then remembered the incident at the plantation and asked,

“What the hell was that about, what wuz she screamin’ fer?”

Bamberger told him,

“You don’t need to know about it, it’s between the colonel and me, yeah, between Him and Me, yeah. Him and me, He and I are gonna have a real talk, a real talk, yeah, we’re gonna have a real nice talk, yeah.”

Then she started laughing hysterically.


	11. The Errand boy, the chef and war.

Patrol boat Riverene ‘Streetgang’ passed the bend in the river. PBR Streetgang passed the two high earth embankments that seemed to serve as markers for a literal gates of Hell.

Willard stood in the Conn next to Chef. Chef stood at the wheel piloting the boat in the stead of the deceased Chief. Lance sat on the top of the ships mast staring ahead in his usual stupor and Lt. Bamberger was nowhere to be seen. Willard realized she was hiding in the ship’s hull below the deck. That was where she had been for the past two miles of river.

As the PBR approached the point of destination, the crew and Willard saw a thick phalanx of canoes and catamarans crewed by men of various ethnicities all painted in bleached mud. When PBR Streetgang reached them, the smaller craft parted as one to allow PBR Streetgang to reach the shore. On shore stood a large throng of people of various ages. Around the large temple on the shore and in some places over the river, some men were left hanging half naked as if they were sides of beef in a meat locker.

It was quite literally medieval.

As PBR Streetgang’s bow bumped against the steps that went straight into the water, a man burst out of the crowd. He was longhaired, bearded, and wearing jeans, boots, and a Montagnard tunic. He also wore several cameras and a pair of Macarthur style sunglasses.

This man bounded down the stairs to the boat and shouted in a jovial ‘hale-fellow-well-met’ manner.

“I’m an American! Hey, Yanks.”

He saw Chef’s cigarettes and reached for them, saying,

 

“And you got the cigarettes and that’s what I been dreamin’ of.

The strange Harlequin-like man led Willard from the boat, leaving Lance, Chef, and unknown to him, Bamberger, on the boat. Chef and Lance looked straight ahead at the sight before them and so, did not see Bamberger slip into the water, naked save for a pistol belt that had only a sheathed utility knife.

Bamberger swam to the bank at a point shielded from view by thick and vine like undergrowth. She used the mud from the bank to cover her skin from head to toe before proceeding into the compound in stealth.

Bamberger wanted to see the man. She had an almost biological need to see this terrible towering figure that dominated her mind and her life for the past three years.

She watched as Willard left the boat again, this time obviously to confront Kurtz. She was unsurprised when a large throng of Kurtz followers mobbed him immobilized him and turned him over rolling him in the mud and rain before dragging the immobilized man to the large temple interior. Bamberger killed none of Kurtz’ fanatical guards, they did not see her as she moved and so, there was no need.

Bamberger skulked to a close vantage point near the main temple and peered through one of the open stone windows to look and listen.

Kurtz sat in shadow on his bed pallet. He leaned on one elbow and spoke to Willard, who was bound and under guard.

Kurtz spoke innocuously of Willard’s home and the picturesque scenery there, before asking Willard,

“Are you an assassin?”

Willard answered,

“I’m a Soldier.”

Kurtz came up out of the shadow and told Willard contemptuously,

“You’re neither! You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks,…to collect a bill.”

To Bamberger Kurtz looked wasted. He had obviously put on at least a dozen pounds since she last saw him and his head was shaved, as was his face.

Rescuing Willard was out. She would never get him to the boat before these fanatics killed both of them. Bamberger hung back as Kurtz spoke to Willard, confiding in him and talking of cabbages and kings.

Bamberger made her way back to the PBR and swam to the boat’s stern. She heard Engineman Hicks activate the boat’s radio and speak into the mouthpiece.

“Almighty, Almighty, this is PBR Streetgang, frequency check over.”

The radio sparked to life and the response answered,

“PBR Streetgang, this is Almighty, Radio check confirmed, over.”

Bamberger crawled aboard the boat and took the Aspa nut from between her legs, where she had hidden it. The semi hard shell protected a center filled with a semi toxic fluid. Ingesting the fluid would not kill you, but it would put you into a coma so deep that you would be taken for dead for up to six or seven hours.

The Green Beret placed the Aspa nut in her mouth being careful not to crack the shell. 

Bamberger came up to Chef and he was shocked to see her naked mud covered silent form. Most of the mud was washed away by the river, but enough remained to give her an eerie otherworldly appearance. She took Chef in an embrace and kissed him openmouthed. She used her tongue to push the Aspa nut into His mouth, then, Bamberger pushed his teeth down onto its shell cracking it and causing him to fall to the deck.

Anyone who now examined the man would be positive he was dead.

The next morning, Willard had been moved to a standing bamboo cage in the compound. The manic jumping half-crazed Photojournalist was his companion, talking to him. Bamberger paused and craned her ear to hear what he was saying.

“,…He hates all this,…he HATES it, see,…his mind is clear, but his SOUL is mad, his mind is clear, but his SOUL is MAD!,…He’s got somethin’ in mind for you,..”

She moved away and went to Kurtz’ chambers. He was there and at first seemed oblivious to her presence. Then Kurtz perked up in sudden alertness. He told his guards and the women in the room with him,

“Go, all of you, go, now.”

Then he said to the air itself,

“Come, you may come in now,… Stefani.”

Stefani stepped into a slanted pillar of light and allowed Kurtz to see her.

Naked, mud streaked, wearing only a belt and knife and carrying an AK47 taken from a sleeping guard that would never again wake.

She did not speak, instead looking at him. Her air was one of obvious disappointment.

Kurtz could tell and told her,

“I must apologize for my,…fallen state,…It seems I cannot become what you have become.

I am sorry, I wish I could allow you to finish me, but that task belongs to him. I, I cannot deny him what he has earned.

Stefani then spoke, and asked Kurtz,

“Why am I?”  
“You came to the Green Berets, and, as soon as I saw you I knew what had to be done. I knew that it was not enough to be a warrior; one had to become war, to become everything war is and was. In order to do that, I had to take away everything that war is not.”

Her perplexed stare caused him to continue,

“War is not gentleness, war is not peace, war, is not mercy, all of those things had to be purged from you.

I see that you have killed; your hands are drenched in blood you can never wash away, good. War’s hands must be forever blood soaked.

I see also that you have sloughed off your skin of civilization; the pathetic rags of pretense and posture are gone. Now you are pure and clean, now you are war.”

“What now?”

“Now you must kill the fool. Await the right moment and kill the monkey with the eyes around his neck, when that is done, you may do as you will, for in time I will already be dead.”

“Where will I go?”

“Where you will, and you will do WHAT you will killing whomever you will and sparing whomever you will, according to your own whim and wish.”

Stefani turned and walked out, leaving Kurtz to his maunderings. After she left, Kurtz went out to the PBR and found Chef on the deck. He checked the man’s pulse and found none, checked his breathing and found none. Someone had killed him. Kurtz left him there and went to see Willard who was now tied sitting to a stake near the temple.

“He’s dead. The man you left on your boat.”

Willard looked up and knew that Kurtz was positive he was speaking the truth. The bland conviction in his voice and on his face was unmistakable. Willard looked up into his camouflage painted face and despaired. If Chef was dead, then there really was no hope, then it occurred to him to wonder about Bamberger. Kurtz did not even seem to know she existed.

Where was she, why had not Kurtz even mentioned her? Lance was in the village reduced to man-childish innocence and now, Chef was dead, probably by Kurtz one hand, but where in hell was Lt. Bamberger?

Bamberger was on the deck of Patrol Boat Riverene Streetgang feeding Chef another Aspa nut to extend his deep coma. As she did this, the radio sparked to life.  
“PBR Streetgang, this is Almighty, Radio check, over,…”

“PBR Sta-reetgang, this is Almighty, radio check,…over.”

“PBR Streetgang?”

“PBR Sta-reetgang?” 

Bamberger picked up the handset and pressed the Push to talk button,

“Almighty, this is PBR Streetgang, on station and standing by, situation is fluid and evolving at this time, stand by for further determination, over”

“PBR Streetgang, Almighty copies, awaiting determination of status, over.”

“Roger that, PBR Streetgang, out.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Sarge has passed away. Her stories will remain to entertain and delight, but no more are coming.


End file.
